Los Angeles daily herald., 1887-08-12
FRIDAY, AUGUST 12, 1887
Throwing Dust i'm the Eyes OIL
the Public.

Throwing Dust IN tne Eyes Oh
the Public.
The San Francisco Chronicle, of
August 10th, has an extraordinary
telegram from Los Angeles respecting
the action of the Board of Supervisors
on the assessment made by Mr..
Mason. 1t is in the form of u tele-
gram from its regular agent here.
These dispatches are sent by one OF
the editors of the Times, who is in the
habit OF pouring voluminous gobs
from the editorial columns of his own
paper into those of the Chronicle. and
calling it news. If our San Francisco
contemporary cares to pay for this
kind of matter it is no concern OF
ours, but we are inclined to think
that it would rather be right than
wrong in the general character of the
telegrams that go into its columns as
news. This eeracious dispatch starts
out as follows:
For the last two months there has
been some panic among property
owners, caused by the repeated decla-
rations of Democratic paper that
Mason, the Republican County As
sessor, was making the assessment
SO atrociously high that this county
would have to pay more taxes than
San Francisco or words to that effect.
The Democratic paper referred to is
the HERALD. This journal, it is true,
did object to Mr.. Mason's more than
doubling the valuations of Los Angeles
county at one fell swoop, but it never
committed the absurdity of claiming
that raising our assessment from forty
millions to upward of ninety-two mil
lions of dollars would make
Los Angeles county pay more
taxes than San Francisco county.
What we claimed, and rightly claimed,
was that the action of this Republican
County Assessor had made Los Ange-
les pay more into the State Treasury,
in ratio, than San Francisco. Our
case is precisely as if the City and
County Assessor of San Francisco had
raised the assessment valuation in the
metropolitan city of California from
the $3.50, 900, 900, more or less, OF last
wear 1--WE do not recall the exact fig
ures) to about s525, ,000,O If such
an eccentric performance had been re-
corded in the Golden Gate no journal
would have jumped more stiff-legged
IN recalcitrance than the Chronicle.
Yet the taxpayers of Los Angeles
have been subjected to precisely such
an experience. To gauge the effect
of this enormous over assessment we
did not depend on mere speculation,
but had recourse to Hon. John I.
Ga fey, of the State Board of Equal
ization, and to Mr.. l. w. Hellman,
the President of the Farmers and
Merchants Bank. Both of these gen.
tlemen were specially qualified to
form a correct judgment as to the
effect upon Los Angeles county's con-
tribution to the expenses of the State
government of Mr.. Mason's radical
new departure, the one from official
sources of information, and the other
from his vigilant oversight of matters
of taxation, to an intelligent consider
alton of which topic he was i'm
PEELED by the fact that he is one of the
largest taxpayers in Southern Cali
fornia. They both agreed that Los
Angeles county would pay into the
State treasury fully six hundred
thousand dollars more this year than
last. There is large element
amongst our people who do not like
this, and who regret that they did not
elect to the office of County Assessor
Mr.. Mason's Democratic opponent,
who is a gentleman of sense and
judgment.
The rest of Times's editorial of a
few days ago is poured into the
columns of the Chronicle without
mercy. 1t contains the old twaddle
about the Democratic Board of Super
visors raising the assessment list
as a whole. The HERALD has
heretofore explained that that part OF
the extraordinary and bungling work OF
Mr.. Mason consisted in mysteriously
and suspiciously lowering the assess
ments of certain large rancheros,
while he advanced those of small
holders from one hundred and sixty
to two hundred per cent. Thus this
yirtuous Assessor, who raised the to-
tai assessment of Los Angeles county
from $40, 200, 900 to $92, 2,250, 900, low
cred the assessment of the Trabuco
ranch to a figure $4s, 900 below that of
last year. Numerous other in
stances of this peculiar favorit
ism claimed the attention OF
the Board. As it consists OF four
Democrats to one Republican, and is